And the Rest Is History (17 page)

Wallis's first foray into wedlock was with Earl Winfield Spencer, who passed himself off as the son of wealth. After the nuptials, she discovered that Spencer's background was a fabrication; in reality he was a U.S. navy pilot who was later stationed in the Far East. Wallis joined him there, and while visiting Peking she discovered ancient Asian sex secrets, which were later to stand her in good stead.

Her second marriage was to the British Ernest Aldrich Simpson, a shipping executive, who left his wife for her. In England, Wallis's youthful aspirations would soon come true beyond her wildest dreams.

Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David, of the House of Windsor, was baptized by the Archduke of Canterbury in England. As the eldest son of King George V and the great-grandson of Queen Victoria, he was born with the bluest of blood in his veins and the silverest of spoons in his mouth. Edward became the Prince of Wales on his sixteenth birthday, and from that time he was groomed to be king of Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, and Emperor of India. His impeccable pedigree, good looks, charm, wealth, and prestige made him the most photographed celebrity of his era, as well as the world's most eligible bachelor. However, Edward's compulsive womanizing dismayed his protocol-conscious parents, and they were soon to discover just how loose a cannon the royal heir could be.

The first time Wallis met Edward was on January 10, when his mistress, Lady Thelma Furness, introduced them at her country home in Leicestershire, where the Simpsons had been invited as her houseguests. Wallis later recalled that she was taken with Edward's “slightly wind-rumpled hair, the turned-up nose, and a strange, wistful, almost sad look about the eyes when his expression was in repose.” In his memoirs Edward writes that when he first met Wallis, she was suffering from a bad cold. He asked her if she missed American central heating, to which she replied, “I'm sorry, Sir, but you have disappointed me. Every American woman who comes to your country is always asked that same question. I had hoped for something more original from the Prince of Wales.”

In 1934, Lady Furness needed to go to New York to support her sister in a custody battle over her daughter, Gloria Vanderbilt, and she asked Wallis, over a luncheon at the Ritz, for a favor in regard to her royal lover: “Look after the little man. See that he does not get into any mischief.” Thelma viewed Wallis as unattractive and therefore not a threat, but soon after the lunch, Thelma discovered the naiveté of her beliefs.

Lady Simpson became the prince's ever-present shadow; a special branch of the police trailed them and reported “that the lady seemed to have POW [Prince of Wales] completely under her thumb.” A besotted Edward said, “In character, Wallis was, and still remains, complex and elusive, and from the first I looked upon her as the most independent woman I had ever met. This refreshing trait I was inclined to put down as one of the happiest outcomes of 1776.”

For Wallis's part, the prince proved the open sesame to a world she had always longed to enter. She said, “Yachts materialized; the best suites in the finest hotels were flung open; airplanes stood waiting ... it was like being Wallis in Wonderland.” Their love affair assumed critical mass with the death of King George when his son ascended the throne. Three months after his succession, he expressed his desire to marry Mrs. Simpson as soon as her divorce came through. The queen mother refused to accept his choice of bride and referred to Wallis as “that woman.” Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin declared that the British people would never countenance a twice-divorced American woman as their queen; moreover, as the king was head of the Church of England, it would also be against its precepts for him to marry a divorcée. Edward's choice was clear: take a suitable bride or abdicate.

If Edward gave up the throne, it would mean renouncing his family, who would not forgive the royal scandal. He was informed that if he ever were to enter Britain without an invitation, his stipend would be terminated. Moreover, from age sixteen he had been trained for his royal role; he knew no other. The official motto of the Prince of Wales is the German motto
“Ich dien”
(“I serve”), and therefore his betrayal of his family extended to the betrayal of his countrymen. Despite these pressures, on December 11, 1936, Edward made his worldwide broadcast: “I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish without the help and the support of the woman I love.” Surprisingly, Wallis did not want the abdication, offering rather to assume the role of royal mistress. She explained, “How can a woman be a whole empire to a man?”

To commemorate Wallis's coup of having a royal abdicate on her behalf,
Time
named her “Woman of the Year,” the first occasion the magazine had ever given its “Man of the Year” title to a woman. The man who would not be king, the newly titled Duke of Windsor, gave his fiancée an engagement ring with a massive 19.77-karat Mogul emerald with the inscription
WE are ours now
. (The
W
stood for Wallis, the
E
for Edward.) The couple married on June 3, 1937, at Chateau de Cande, France. The new king, George VI, forbade any members of the royal family to attend. The queen mother never changed her view of her despised daughter-in-law and forever maintained, “To give up all this for that.” Proof of the spell their romance cast on the world: In 1998 Sotheby's sold, for $29,000, a slice of the couple's wedding cake in a box marked “A piece of our wedding cake WE WE 3-VI-37.” Winston Churchill called their romance “one of the great loves of history.”

For her part, the newly created Duchess of Windsor took as her maxim, “Never explain, never complain.” Wallis later told writer Gore Vidal that the morning after her nuptials, she woke to find her husband “standing beside the bed, saying, ‘And now what shall we do?'” For their honeymoon they spent time in Venice, where they attended a performance of
Romeo and Juliet
. As they entered, the audience rose to its feet and roared,
“Viva l'amore!”

The duke and duchess did not have a common love story, nor was their world a common one. They lived in baronial splendor and assumed the role of social royalty who were invited to the grandest soirees of the world. Their own dinner parties were never-to-be-forgotten events; one fortunate guest stated, “An invitation from the Duchess was like a gift from God.” They never had any children but were always surrounded by their adored pugs, who dined from silver bowls, were sprayed with Christian Dior perfume, and wore mink, diamond-studded collars, and gold Cartier leashes.

In the 1930s, as the Nazi storm clouds gathered over Europe, people welcomed the romance of the duke and his duchess, a true-life fairy tale in which a king relinquished his empire because it meant nothing without the woman he loved.

20

1932

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

W
hen the king of the silver screen fell for the queen of screwball comedy, their romance tugged at the collective strings of Hollywood's heart. Although their years together were few, their love story remains an iconic one from cinema's Golden Age.

Jane Alice Peters was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1908. After her parents divorced, her mother took Jane and her two brothers to Los Angeles. Protective of their younger sister, her siblings taught her to swear as a verbal shield to fend off unwelcome suitors. She made her film debut at age twelve after a director saw her playing baseball in the street. A natural ham, she dropped out of school at age fifteen to pursue an acting career. Two years later she was signed by Fox Studios; her main assets were her high cheekbones and figure, which she wore to perfection in her trademark clingy gowns. She borrowed the name Lombard from a family friend, as she thought it had more allure than her own. After a devastating car accident, she was dropped by Fox and began working for Mack Sennett, where the legendary director of slapstick helped Carole develop her superb comic timing. The Hoosier became known in Hollywood as “the profane angel” because of the juxtaposition of her flawless face and expert command of four-letter words.

Carole's destiny, William Clark Gable, was born in Ohio; his mother passed away when he was ten months old. He enjoyed hunting; however, he also enjoyed reciting Shakespeare. At age sixteen he was talked into traveling to Akron with a friend to work at a tire factory. It was in Ohio that Gable saw his first play and was hooked. He found work acting in a theatrical company until it folded. His net worth: twenty-six cents. Hopping freight trains, he piled logs, sold neckties, and became a telephone repairman. One of the last phones he fixed was at a theater, where he met Josephine Dillon, seventeen years his senior, a woman who was to be more of a mother figure than a wife. The two headed to Hollywood, where he hoped to break into movies.

While his marriage began to deteriorate, his career picked up momentum; he appeared in regional theater, in road shows, and as an extra in the movies. A 1930 Los Angeles stage production made the studios take notice, though many producers felt that Gable's ears would prove an impediment to success as a leading man. Two years later Clark had attained such heartthrob status that “Who do you think you are—Clark Gable?” became a standard put-down. One of his first reviews raved, “He's young, vigorous and brutally masculine.” Gable's off-screen persona mirrored his on-screen persona, and his penchant for sleeping with any woman with a heartbeat led to the demise of his marriage to Josephine. A few days after his divorce came through, he married Texas socialite Ria Langham, a widow ten years his senior.

In 1932, Clark received a contract with MGM and starred in
Possessed
opposite Joan Crawford (then married to Douglas Fairbanks Jr.), in which they steamed up the room, both onscreen and off. Journalist Adela Rogers St. Johns deemed the relationship “the affair that nearly burned Hollywood down.” However, it was Gable's unshaven lovemaking with braless Jean Harlow in
Red Dust
that put him on Hollywood's radar. Knowing he was box-office gold for those who possessed estrogen, he was cast as the lead in
It Happened One Night
. In one scene he took off his shirt to reveal his bare chest. This gesture touched off a crisis among undershirt manufacturers. It also earned him the title “King of Hollywood.”

The first time Carole met Clark was when they were both hired to star in a Paramount production of
No Man of Her Own
. At the time, Lombard was married to actor William Powell, and though the marriage was rocky, she still entertained hopes of it lasting. Dorothy Mackaill, who portrayed Gable's onscreen discarded mistress, recalled a flare-up between Carole and Clark that ensued when Carole saw the leading man, on loan from MGM, under his studio's directive, wearing a Hoover button. Lombard, objecting to his choice of candidate, ripped it off his lapel and told him he could “shove it up L. B. Mayer's ass.” Clark, who felt that women should act like ladies, was not impressed. The feeling was mutual—at the final-day party, Lombard gave Gable a ten-pound smoked ham with his photograph pasted on the packaging. However, despite previous tensions, before they parted, they did so with a hug and farewell kiss.